Bride Flabbergasted After Wedding Guest Book Company Sends Her “Shoulder Meat” Book Instead

Wedding preparations are highly stressful — there's just so much that can go wrong. But, as Murphy's Law informs us, we need to be able to roll with the punches, so while it's tempting to curse life for not handing you everything you want easily, focusing on pivoting and trying to rectify a situation will ultimately feel better than freaking out and just leaving it at that.

But sometimes the obstacles thrown our way are so bizarre, they force us to take a moment and appreciate just how truly weird our existences can be.

It's something that bride-to-be and TikToker Tara Henderson (@tarahenderson6) experienced when what she thought was her wedding guest book arrived in the mail.

She documented her shock in a viral clip that's accrued over 792,000 views on the popular video-sharing platform.

"All right so I get married in 12 days. And today I was supposed to get my guest book and when I opened it, to my surprise ... I got the wrong order."

As upsetting as that fact alone might be for a bride who's been planning a wedding that she's less than two weeks away from, Tara said that was only the beginning.

"But nothing could've prepared me for what I was about to open," she says before switching the orientation of her recording.

Before her, laying on the table is a book that is probably one of the furthest things in a person's mind if you were to ask them to picture a wedding guest book in their head.

It was an all black book emblazoned with what appears to be a bold, white, all caps, Times New Roman font text that simply reads: "SHOULDER MEAT."

Tara, understandably perplexed, but smiling through the video, proceeds to discuss the strange book she received in the mail as she opens it up to share its contents with her viewers.

"Shoulder meat," she says before opening the kind of book you'd probably only find in a store that exists in the one weird dream you had while staying at an all-inclusive resort.

Or maybe it's the kind of thing authorities find in the house of a super-fan who was planning to kill their favorite artist.

Tara says, "You might be thinking what is that? It's ... I got a picture book of people I do not know with meat on their shoulder." She begins to flip through the pages of what looks like various folks who've congregated for a social gathering of sorts.

There's nothing inherently out of the ordinary about the folks in these photographs. Many of them are actually dressed quite nicely and look like they're having a swell time among peers at a party of sorts.

But each person in each photograph appears to have different pieces of meat resting on their shoulders.

"I do not know these people," Tara says again, letting out what sounds like a concerned laugh. However, it does seem like she was interested in getting the book out to the person who actually ordered it. Or at the very least, apologize for them having to wait for it to come in the mail. "So if you were supposed to get this, and instead you got my wedding guest book, I'm sorry."

At this point in the video, she flips the camera again to show her smiling face. "I did contact the place I ordered from and they will be sending me my correct book. But, I'm sorry if you were expecting to get your Shoulder Meat book and you got my wedding guest book," she says, expressing her apologies again.

As of this writing, Tara hasn't posted an update on the Shoulder Meat book chronicles, or if anyone has reached out to her as the individual it was originally intended for.

TikTokers thought that Tara shouldn't be so quick as to toss out the Shoulder Meat book, however.

One person penned: "No you don’t understand. This IS the guest book."

And it seems like there were others who thought this was a great idea, too. As another TikToker wrote: "Hear me out: Use this as your guestbook."

There was one user on the app who even suggested that Tara turn shoulder meating into a wedding activity her guests could participate in. "I think you need to take pics of guests and wedding party with shoulder meat and do a recreation shoulder meat wedding edition book."

Someone else said that they wished they were so lucky to accidentally receive this type of photographic literature in the mail. "This would immediately be my most prized possession," they said.

There were a lot of folks who were team Shoulder Meat: "I have never ONCE looked at my wedding guestbook. But I would look at this once a week forever."

So what could this be? Online searches for shoulder meat as a specific term either refer to Tara's video, or a variety of butcher-themed literature, meat shops, and recipes for cooking this specific body part.

Why do you think someone would order a book like this? Is it part of some type of modern art collection that's so high-concept in one of those "you don't get it, it's supposed to suck" kind of way?

Or maybe it's an inside joke between friends, and one person decided to go the extra mile and dedicate an entire book to a long-running interpersonal gag?